Above: A map of Syria showing the location of Deir Ez Zor in the eastern part of the country closer to the Iraqi border, from which the Russian Ministry of Defense says U.S. jets came to bomb an SAA strongpoint in the city besieged by the Islamic State.

“The Syrian military said the airstrikes enabled an IS advance on a hill overlooking the air base. It called the strike a “serious and blatant attack on Syria and its military,” and “firm proof of the U.S. support of Daesh,” using the Arabic acronym for IS.

A Syrian military spokesman told a briefing early Sunday that the U.S. airstrike destroyed three tanks, three infantry fighting vehicles, four mortars and an anti-aircraft gun, Russia’s TASS news agency reported. The unnamed spokesman said the IS advance on the base was stopped after Russian warplanes were called in to hit IS positions.

Russia called for an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council and demanded “full and detailed explanations about whether this was deliberate support of the Islamic State or another mistake.”

Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova was quoted by the state news agency TASS as saying that “after today’s attack on the Syrian army, we come to the terrible conclusion that the White House is defending the Islamic State.””

Since the RT video posted above was published hours ago, Washington has expressed 'regret' for what the Pentagon says was a strike made in error against what Air Force F-16 and A-10 pilots thought was an Islamic State target. However, given the close proximity between ISIS and SAA lines around the air base at the city of Deir Ez Zor, and the fact that the U.S.-Russian status agreement of last October as well as the newly minted ceasefire were supposed to lead to data sharing to prevent such 'incidents', the Russian Foreign Ministry is asking pointed questions. Both in public via statements by spokeswoman Maria Zakharova and behind closed doors during a United Nations Security Council session held Saturday night at Moscow's request. You can see some video of Amb. Churkin (father to RT correspondent Anastasia Churkina, incidentally) below:

“Russia’s Ambassador to the United Nations questioned the United States sudden interest in the fight against Daesh in the eastern city of Deir ez-Zor where Syrian forces loyal to the Assad regime have been the vanguard of the fighting force against Daesh saying that it was suspicious that the Americans would suddenly try to “help” the Syrian Army as they claimed they were targeted Daesh in the region.

”It is highly suspicious that the United States chose to conduct this particular air strike at this time,” Russia’s ambassador Vitaly Churkin said. He also questioned America’s willingness to actively engage the fight against terror rather than focusing on attempting regime change in Syria saying that US forces did “nothing when ISIS advanced on Palmyra.”

A major diplomatic row looks to be developing between the United States and Russia only five days after a breakthrough ceasefire deal that had called for the two nations to coordinate airstrikes — in large part to prevent incidents like Saturday’s horrific bombing attack against Syrian forces — and came with a demand by the White House for the so-called moderate rebels to disband for the al-Nusra Front with whom they have been embedded with in recent weeks.”

This not so friendly fire occurred just days after Kerry and Lavrov labored for over a half day in talks behind closed doors in Geneva to reach a ceasefire deal under which Moscow foreswore any strikes on 'moderate rebel' positions. In return, the U.S. was required to delineate where the 'moderates' it supports are in Syria, and further urge them on pain of being bombed to physically separate themselves from the 'bad' jihadists who aren't protected by the ceasefire deal, including ISIS. We saw of course on Friday how well that has worked out so far, with the 'moderate' Free Syrian Army flag waving jihadists greeting American special forces in the town of Al-Rai with jeers and shouts of yalla (get out) and 'crusader infidel dogs/pigs'. Interestingly enough after reviewing the video of the insults heaped by the jihadists on their American sponsors' special forces, the Russia Analyst came across pro-Kurdish sources accounts of the Al-Rai incident. (the Arabic and Persian derived word rai ironically in Russian means a 'paradise').

According to these Twitter feeds led by @Agitpapa, Washington's NATO allies the Turks may have set the whole provocation up in order to send the Pentagon the message that Ankara, not Washington runs the show in the euphemistically named Operation Euphrates Shield. Whether or not the Al-Rai incident was a Turkish provocation and one that Pentagon hardliners would immediately suspect was calculated to embarrass them over their support of the 'moderate' FSA jihadists, what we do know is the following: less than 24 hours after the altercation in Al-Rai, Russian President Vladimir Putin complained that the U.S. was withholding details of the ceasefire agreement from the public because it would be clear to all that Washington was trying to protect the 'combat potential' of its proxies. Putin also said that Washington was not upholding its end of the ceasefire bargain to make the 'moderate' jihadists physically separate themselves from Al-Qaeda. We know that the U.S. State Department has also lied in claiming that Damascus was withholding aid convoys to jihadist controlled East Aleppo, when the jihadis have been shooting at the Castello Road which was supposed to be demilitarized for humanitarian purposes (and Moscow has the drone footage of Washington's pet jihadists shooting to prove it).

It was on Friday that Al-Rai International correspondent Elijah J. Magnier reported that Moscow had given Damascus the green light to shoot down Israeli Air Force drones and jets attacking Syrian troops trying to push Al-Qaeda linked jihadis out of the Syrian-held Golan Heights.

According to Syria Girl aka Australia-based activist Mimi Al Laham, the Syrian Army succeeded in shooting down one Israeli F-16 jet, whose pilot may have ejected before the wreckage came down on the IDF occupied portion of the Golan. Whether or not the IAF lost an F-16 to a Syrian S300 SAM as sites like Syrian Perspective claimed, the SAA clearly managed to shoot down an Israeli drone. And the Israelis' fears that Moscow could deploy its advanced Pantsir or even worse, S400 SAM and Krasukha-4 electronic warfare systems south of Damascus has forced the IAF to rely more on standoff missiles fired from Israel's air space to strike Syrian targets.

Tel Aviv's desire not to lose the IAF's reputation for invincibility in air to air combat maintained since 1982, as well as scuttling negotiations between Israeli firms and Gazprom over the Leviathian offshore field, have thus far allowed cooler heads to prevail on the hotline between Kheimmim and IAF command. But there have been other factors as well preventing any Russian-Israeli clashes in the skies over Damascus or Lebanon, above all Putin's desire not to give his enemies in Washington another 'let's you and him fight' scenario after Russia avoided war with Turkey last year following the (allegedly Langley and Gulenist orchestrated) shoot down of the SU-24.

Despite business-like relations between Bibi and Putin, Tel Aviv has clearly been testing the limits of Moscow's patience when it comes to strikes on SAA positions near Quneitra with nary a Hezbollah soldier in sight. Which makes the timing of the U.S. strike on Deir Ez Zor appear all the more coordinated with the Israelis campaign of harassing the SAA in support of takfiri terrorists. In other words, the worst (neocon globalist) elements inside the U.S. and Israeli militaries (the latter provoking the Syrians and Russians/Iranians two weeks ahead of Rosh Hashanah) appear to be cooperating to undermine the ceasefire in Syria before the American and Russian militaries can begin to implement it.

Less than 48 hours after the Pentagon and advocates of the 'moderate' Syria rebels had jihadist thrown rotten eggs splashed all over their faces, boom -- the USAF suddenly decides to bomb ISIS along the front lines of besieged Deir Ez Zor,far away from where U.S. special forces are operating andwhere there are no 'moderate' rebels, only the SAA and ISIS. Please note, that as part of the exhaustively negotiated ceasefire deal hammered out last week in Geneva, the U.S. also agreed to joint sharing of targeting data if not necessarily joint air strikes by American-led coalition and Russian Air Forces against the Islamic State and the re-branded Al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria formerly known as Jabhat-al-Nusra.

The Pentagon says it immediately ordered the two F-16s and two A-10s involved in the mission to withdraw upon the Russian command in Syria contacting them via a direct hotline set up last October. The State Department including the obnoxious Amb. Power claim the U.S. is investigating the incident. But as pro-Kurdish Twitter blogger @Agitpapa maintains, the signs that this was a deliberate act to sabotage the U.S.-Russia ceasefire deal are all there for anyone with two brain cells to see. And the most likely culprit in the chain of command when it comes to undermining the Obama Administration's stated (if unofficially sabotaged by both the DoD and CIA) directives to cooperate with the Russians on targeting ISIS/JaN is none other than Lt. Gen. Stephen J. Townsend -- the same U.S. theater commander who shortly after taking over arranged for Kurdish units to attack the SAA's National Defense Forces (NDF) militia in the northeastern Syrian town of Hasakah.

+on a top Pentagon or govt job & he's scoring brownie pts w the neocons & the Killary war party by giving Assad & Putin a hard time.

It appears this Sunday morning that certain factions of the U.S. and Israeli militaries are determined to keep prodding the SAA and by extension the Russians until they provoke a violent response. The goal seems to be to provoke the shoot down of an American jet bombing Syrians or even Russian advisers by 'Syrian' or 'Iranian' air defenses that Washington's warmongers will argue with some justification were manned by Russian personnel (particularly given the fact that Iran's S300 crews are not yet fully trained on their systems, even if they would be airlifted by the Russians into Syria). No doubt such scenarios have already been 'war-gamed' by the neocons desperate to salvage some sort of victory from the ashes of their defeated proxies incinerated by Russian bombs in the fields and rubble of southeast Aleppo.

Whether The Kremlin can avoid the trap that is being obviously set for Putin just in time for an October Surprise without appearing timid in the face of flagrant provocations remains to be seen. The most likely forms of Russian retaliation stronger than diplomatic protests are likely, as we have previously argued here at RogueMoney, to involve informational and asymmetrical warfare, rather than direct military action that plays into the 'aggressive Russian Bear' Narrative.

Townsend is the 4th US general who has mutinied against Obama after McChrystal, Petraeus, and Flynn

Ironically the only way to prevent Cold War 2.0 from going 'hot' to some extent in Syria may be to escalate the cold civil war already underway in Washington between the CIA with its Saudi/Qatar firster, pro-jihadist policies supported by the globalists and the patriots left inside the DIA or DoD (including any members of the military in the NSA who may have smoking gun SIGINT evidence of CIA collusion with ISIS). If the 'white hats' don't take further steps to expose the AlCIAeda traitors of Langley soon, the odds of a staged or provocateured confrontation between U.S. planes and Russian jets or air defense systems in Syria increase substantially.

For our part, we concur with W the Intelligence Insider and the Guerrilla's analysis that October 22-27 is likely to prove a pivotal week in geopolitics. The dirtiest parts of the American Deep State (or what my friend the Saker calls the 'Anglo-Zionist Empire') have clearly concluded the old 'glue horse' Hillary is not a winning mare, and are pushing ahead with plans for more chaos and tensions with Russia in this election season.

The Russia Analyst is a U.S. based writer, editor and entrepreneur who previously lived and worked in Moscow. In addition to his on the ground experience in the Russian Federation, 'James' has been a close observer and commentator on Russian business, politics and culture for over a decade.

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